Gore's new media venture seeks to blend TV, Internet / Former VP says his Current network gives viewers a voice

Jesse Hamlin, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published
4:00 am PDT, Tuesday, April 5, 2005

Former VP Al Gore opened the press conference Monday morning.
Former VP Al Gore and lawyer Joel Hyatt, the chairman and CEO, respectively, of a new cable network called INdTV announced the details of their new plan at the 118 King Street building where the studio will be built.
Brant Ward 4/5/05 less

Former VP Al Gore opened the press conference Monday morning.
Former VP Al Gore and lawyer Joel Hyatt, the chairman and CEO, respectively, of a new cable network called INdTV announced the details of their new ... more

Photo: Brant Ward

Photo: Brant Ward

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Former VP Al Gore opened the press conference Monday morning.
Former VP Al Gore and lawyer Joel Hyatt, the chairman and CEO, respectively, of a new cable network called INdTV announced the details of their new plan at the 118 King Street building where the studio will be built.
Brant Ward 4/5/05 less

Former VP Al Gore opened the press conference Monday morning.
Former VP Al Gore and lawyer Joel Hyatt, the chairman and CEO, respectively, of a new cable network called INdTV announced the details of their new ... more

Photo: Brant Ward

Gore's new media venture seeks to blend TV, Internet / Former VP says his Current network gives viewers a voice

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Al Gore never said he invented the Internet. But the new San Francisco-based cable TV network he's heading promises to transform television by plugging it into the Internet.

Current, the name of Gore's enterprise, hopes to do that by airing a shuffle of short news features, some produced by the network but many submitted online by viewers. Current will also air segments every half hour showing TV viewers what Google searchers are tapping into at that moment -- everything from current events to tourist destinations. It's all directed at a generation that thinks nothing of plugging into more than one media outlet at once.

"Those who are using the Internet are often watching TV at the same time, " said the former vice president, who's chairman of the board of Current, the new independent cable venture pitched at audiences advertisers covet -- people 18 to 34 years old. "Part of our objective is to connect those two experiences."

Gore, looking very much the hip TV executive in a gray suit, black cowboy boots and an open-necked black shirt, gave the press a taste of the Current vibe and programming Monday morning at the network's industrial chic quarters in an old brick building across from SBC Park. The network plans to hire about 125 people and begins building production and post-production studios on King Street this week.

The new network, planned for an Aug. 1 premiere, will enable Internet users to send video content through the online system "to help us make the viewer-created content that will be a large and growing part of what we put on the air," Gore said.

Last May, Gore and legal entrepreneur Joel Hyatt, the company's CEO, announced that they and about 20 other investors -- among them financier Richard Blum, husband of California Senator Dianne Feinstein, Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy and former MTV and AOL executive Bob Pittman -- had bought Newsworld International, a 24-hour cable network airing international news programs from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. They reportedly bought the network, which they say reaches some 19 million households in the United States, from Vivendi Universal for about $70 million.

At first called INdTV, the network now named Current plans to air short- form, fast-paced segments and snippets called "pods" rather than shows. Tailored for the short attention span, they will be anywhere from 15 seconds to five minutes long.

The pods will include a job-market spot called "Current Gigs," a report on spiritual trends called "Current Soul" and segments about parenting, technology, fashion, music, politics, the environment and relationships. The on-air talent includes Gotham Chopra, a former Channel One anchor, and Laura Ling, a Channel One producer who also has done documentaries for MTV and segments for NBC and PBS.

The short-form format, pioneered by MTV, "is consistent with the fast- paced, two-screen-consuming-at-a-time nature of this audience," said Current Programming President David Neuman, a former NBC executive and former president of Walt Disney Television and Touchstone Pictures.

"This is an audience of media grazers, and we decided to create a network that didn't fight that but facilitated that," Neuman said. He introduced a snazzy, five-minute video -- "a taste of the tapas bar for young adults we call Current" -- that offered snippets of video reports from Sierra Leone, the Middle East, the marijuana fields of Morocco.

It all sounds promising, but the challenge will be selling a new independent network in a crowded field to the handful of cable companies that control distribution, and to advertisers.

At the moment, the current Newsworld network is available mostly via DirectTV satellite service. It also goes to about 5 million households served by Time Warner Cable, Hyatt said, and in San Francisco is carried on Comcast Digital's service. He and Gore plan to put the full-court press on to get wider distribution.

"The odds of any stand-alone network getting carriage are long," said John Higgins, business editor for Broadcasting and Cable magazine, in town for the big cable convention at Moscone Center. "If it doesn't have Fox in front of its name or NBC behind it, it's going to have trouble.

Gary Arlen, the cable expert who runs a Bethesda, Md., media research company that bears his name, agrees.

"The challenge of all new networks is getting carriage and attention," Arlen said. "A Google relationship obviously opens some doors."

The short segments are "perfect for the MTV generations," adds Arlen, who thinks the idea of viewer-created content is great, as long as somebody exercises quality control. Network officials say Current's online audience will vote on the videos they'd like to see make it to the tube, with network editors getting the final say.

Those hoping for a liberal network to balance the conservatism of Fox won't find it here.

"We have no intention of creating a Democratic channel, a liberal channel, a TV version of Air America," Gore said. "That's not what we're about. We're about empowering this generation of young people in their 20s to engage in a dialogue of democracy and to tell the stories about what's going on in their lives using the dominant medium of our time."

Gore and Hyatt won't say how much money they've poured into the venture, nor would they name the advertisers they've bagged so far.

Why do Gore, who's 57, and Hyatt, 54, think they know what people in their 20s want to watch? That's not really their job, they say; those decisions will be left to younger people.